Designed for gardens, walkways, and decks, the WeMo + Osram Lightify Gardenspot Mini RGB Starter Set ($129.99) is the latest smart bulb system to join Belkin's WeMo family of home automation devices. As with the WeMo + Osram Lightify White Tunable Starter Set, the Gardenspot kit is the product of a partnership between Belkin and Osram Sylvania and uses WeMo technology to connect the lights to your home network, allowing you to control them from anywhere using your smartphone. At $129.99, the Gardenspot Starter Set is pretty expensive considering you only get a single 14-foot strand containing 9 mini lights, and they require an outdoor power source, a rarity in most gardens. That said, they are bright, colorful, and can be programmed to turn on and off automatically or when triggered by an If This Then That (IFTTT) event.

Design and Features The Gardenspot kit contains a 14-foot string of LED lights, a WeMo Link that connects to your home Wi-Fi network, a controller, and a power supply. These lights are compatible with other WeMo products such as the WeMo LED Lighting Starter Set, so if you already have a WeMo Link you can just purchase the lights and power supply for $79.99. The string of lights contains 9 round LEDs measuring 1-inch in diameter. Each LED is mounted atop a 2.5-inch long plastic spike. You can remove the spikes and use the included screws to mount them on a wooden deck or railing.

The lights are connected by a thin black ribbon cable. There's a male four-pin connector on one end for daisy-chaining another string of lights, but the Gardenspot maxes out at two strings, which means you're limited to a total of 18 lights. On the other end is a four-pin female connector that connects to an 18-foot ribbon cable (also black) with a small (2.0 by 1.2 by 0.7 inches, HWD) ZigBee controller box that communicates with the WeMo Link. This cable connects to a large (6.0 by 1.2 by 2.0 inches) power brick with a 6-foot three-pronged power cord. One of my biggest gripes with these lights is the need for a Ground Fault Interrupter (GFI) outlet to provide power; unless you have such an outlet installed in or close to your garden, you'll probably have to run extension cords depending on where you want to locate the lights. A rechargeable or solar-powered battery pack would make more sense and eliminate the need for unsightly cabling.

The Gardenspot uses the same WeMo app as most other WeMo devices, including the WeMo Crock-Pot Slow Cooker, the Mr. Coffee Smart Coffeemaker, the WeMo Insight Switch, and the WeMo Light Switch. It has its own On/Off radio button and a slider for brightness. You can change light color using the color wheel, or select one of ten preset colors. What you can't do is assign more than one color at a time; if you choose blue as a color, every bulb will be blue. You also can't program the lights to change colors randomly, at a specific time, or as the result of an event. All color changes must be done manually using the app.

As with other WeMo lights, you can create rules to have the Gardenspot lights turn on and off at specific times of day or at sunrise and sunset. There's also a Sleep Fader option with 1-, 10-, and 30-minute presets, or you can enter a custom time to have the lights gradually fade to off. These lights also support IFTTT, the Internet service that allows you to create triggers based on events from more than 200 channels such as Facebook, Foursqure, ESPN, and Twitter. You can use IFTTT to cause the lights dim to a preset luminance level or turn on and off, but you can't have them change color.

Installation and Performance Installing the Gardenspot isn't difficult, but you may have to run extension cords depending on the location of your garden. In my case, the 18-foot ribbon cable and 6-foot power cord were too short, and required a 25-foot extension cord to reach my backyard GFI outlet. Once I plugged them, in the lights were immediately paired to my existing WeMo Link, but if this is a first installation, all you have to do is plug in the WeMo Link, plug in the lights, and download the WeMo app. Next, connect to the WeMo Link's SSID using your phone or tablet's Wi-Fi settings and return to the app to complete the installation. The app will scan for new products and add them to your list of installed devices. You can give the Gardenspot lights a custom name or do it later using the Edit button.

As we saw with other WeMo connected lighting devices, the Gardenspot worked beautifully with the WeMo app. It instantly reacted to on and off button commands, as well as scheduled on and off times. I created an IFTTT recipe to have the lights turn on when the temperature dropped below 75 degrees and they followed this recipe without issue. Brightness and color adjustments were quick with no lag, and the bulbs provided excellent color quality.

Conclusion If you're looking to brighten up your yard or garden with multicolored outdoor lights, the WeMo + Osram Lightify Gardenspot Mini RGB Starter Set will certainly get the job done. Although the lights provide rich colors and work seamlessly with the WeMo app, there's room for improvement; I'd love the ability to display more than one color at a time, and a rechargeable battery pack would alleviate the need for extension cords and a GFI outlet. Having the ability to connect more than two light strings and pre-program color changes would also be nice. And if you're just looking for indoor lighting, you're better off with one of our Editors' Choice picks, like the color-changing Philips Hue or the white-only Philips Hue Lux.

About the Author

As a Contributing Editor for PCMag, John Delaney has been testing and reviewing monitors, TVs, PCs, networking and smart home gear, and other assorted hardware and peripherals for almost 20 years. A 13-year veteran of PC Magazine's Labs (most recently as Director of Operations), John was responsible for the recruitment, training and management of t... See Full Bio

Belkin WeMo + Osram Lightify Ga...

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